How much would you pay to be at the cutting edge of technology? Some companies ask a lot of their early adopters, like Google who required the first consumers allowed to purchase Glass to cough up an astounding $1,500. Some companies give early adopters little perks, like keychains or t-shirts or whatever other prizes are usually available on Kickstarter for kicking in wild amounts of money. Some companies, however, just want you to have one of those smartwatches you’ve been hearing about for what seems like ages now for a reasonable price. Archos in one such, and the only, company.
Archos, who are absolutely no stranger to the smartwatch scene, are back again with a trio of wallet-friendly smartwatches. They unveiled these neat little suckers at last week’s yearly CES event which was held in Las Vegas. How much do they cost? A whopping $50, which is many times lower than their closest competition. Surely they cut out lots of features to reach that price point? Well, yes and no. Sure, it’s not as richly featured as a Pebble or what is going to be Apple’s eventual entry. What you get for fifty bucks is not bad, though.
The watches have a 1.55-inch black and white LCD screen and a battery life of up to two weeks. Not bad so far. Also, it connects with your phone and does most of the usual bells and whistles. The only downside? It doesn’t have a dedicated app store in place, or any plans to make one, so the uses you find for these things might be severely hampered. Oh, and if you are into throwing down a bit more coin, there is also a $100 model and a $129 model. These watches should be out by June.
